Day Twelve - When The Cock Crows

I had a conversation with some locals awhile back and they were so confused by the fact that I did not wake up to the sound of the cock crowing. I proceeded to tell them that on farms there are cocks that crow at dawn but nowhere in the city will you find one. We use alarm clocks to wake us up. I tell you this story because I woke up to the cocks crow at 6:30am to get ready to go to the Juba airport.

Juba airport. Gong show. That is what it was. All my fault. I think it would be a crime for things to run smoothly for me...I did not print the appropriate documents therefore could not get on the flight. I had to call our driver James to come get a flash drive from me with the appropriate documents, drive to the printer and come back with hard copies for me so I could fly to Aweil. After some frustration and panic, I made it onto the WFP UNHAS flight to Wau, then on to Aweil. The WFP flight held about 46 people and then from Wau to Aweil I was on a 10 seater. I liked that I could see the ground the whole time. Seeing green for miles is nice and very amusing when you see green and then black and white spots because you knew those were were cattle were grazing...I had to wait for my ride from the Aweil airport which consisted of a runway and a hut. A soldier who looked way to young to be carrying a gun, sat on his star covered bicycle and tried to convince me to give him my phone because he didn't have one. He certainly had one, and there was no way he was getting mine. He grew tired of me and eventually wandered off...

Aweil is the capital of the state Northern Bahr el Ghazal, "the real Sudan", as Natalie put is. There are mostly tukuls (mud huts) and small buildings here. The landing strip was a rough road of wet dirt. It is the rainy season and Aweil gets enough rain to flood half of the population out.

Because of the rain, the main bridge is out, so we have to drive 2 hours to our research area so I spent the rest of the day at the UMCOR (The United Methodist Committee on Relief) compound doing work and using their awesome internet. My colleague Nicole got back around 5:30 and we went out with the people who run the place here. They are nice people.

Driving 101 Juba/Sudan: You cannot get anywhere quickly due to the fact many of the roads are more like river beds. No speeding on these babies. It takes 10 minutes to walk from Transmillenium to the office and I am sure if you walked and someone drove you would get there at the same time, if not faster walking. There are paved roads but not much and you still have to be careful on those. AND they may drive on the same side of the road as we do but that doesn't mean the steering wheel of the car is on the correct side. Depending on your vehicle you could be driving on the left or right. Quite bizarre.

That is all.

PEACE! from Aweil where the air is clean...atleast where I currently am...